Author Archive
TransportationCamp DC in the rearview mirror
TransportationCamp DC 2020 was last weekend, and while it was a huge success, it almost didn’t happen at all. More than 500 people were there on Saturday and the waitlist topped 100. The creativity and energy on display was awesome. Recapping such a dynamic event is a challenge, but we collected some short reflections from staff who were there to help give you a feel for what we saw and felt on Saturday if you weren’t able to attend.
Connecting people to jobs and services week: Hey Congress, we need your help to measure access
The Des Moines Area MPO wants to make a shift to award funding the transportation projects that do the most to improve the region’s resident’s access to jobs and services. But—like most MPOs and local governments across the country—its budget for the technology that makes this possible is small. It’s time for Congress to help local communities invest in the right projects.
Connecting people to jobs and services week: Rethinking shared mobility to prioritize access
Transportation is fundamentally about connecting people, but America’s transportation system focuses on moving cars instead. Madlyn McAuilffe from the New Urban Mobility Alliance wrote this guest post about the consequences of our misguided priorities and how we can get back to focusing on building places and transportation networks for people.
Connecting people to jobs and services week: What do destination access metrics look like in action?
Academics have long pointed to a metric called destination access—called by Transportation for America “access to jobs and services”—as a better decision guide than older, conventional measures that focus mainly on the speed of cars. But what does this new practice look like in real life, and where and how is it already being used?
Angry that speed is prioritized over safety? Here’s what to do about it
Last week was #SafetyOverSpeed week here at Transportation for America, where we took a deep dive on our second principle for transportation policy: design for safety over speed. We spent the week discussing how prioritizing speed makes it almost impossible for most Americans to reach destinations anyway other than driving. Now we need to do something about it. […]
Safety over speed: Safe streets are climate-friendly streets
Lowering speeds have more benefits besides saving lives: street designs that keep speeds low help reduce carbon emissions, too. In this blog post by our friends at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Ann Shikany and Carter Rubin discuss how safer roads increase rates of biking, walking, and transit ridership, and enable fewer and shorter car trips.
Safety over speed week: The key to slowing traffic is street design, not speed limits
Today, as “safety over speed” week continues, we’re running a guest post from our friends at Strong Towns that uses some simple pictures to explain how street design is a far more powerful tool for slowing down traffic and prioritizing safety compared to the strategy of lowering speed limits.
Safety over speed week: Prioritizing safety is intrinsically connected with improving transit service
Nearly every bus transit rider starts and ends their trip with a walk, and decisions made to prioritize vehicle speed over safety often have significant impacts on transit. This excerpt from the new book “Better Buses, Better Cities” helps explain how better bus transit and prioritizing safety over speed are intrinsically related.
Our three policy recommendations for cutting the maintenance backlog in half
Yesterday we discussed our first of three new principles and outcomes for transportation investment: “Prioritize repair.” But how? Today we’re taking a quick look at three policy recommendations Congress should consider implementing to help reduce the maintenance backlog by half.
10 questions every presidential candidate should answer about transportation and climate change
On September 4, 10 Democratic presidential candidates will participate in a town hall focused solely on climate change. We have a list of questions related to transportation that we want every candidate to answer. Climate change is undoubtedly a defining issue of our times, and the transportation sector is the single largest source of greenhouse […]
Marcus Young to be Minnesota Department of Transportation’s first Community Vitality Fellow
Transportation for America and the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) are excited to announce MnDOT’s inaugural Community Vitality Fellow, Marcus Young. Young will be embedded within the agency for a year in its Saint Paul headquarters where he will serve as an artist-in-residence, taking a fresh look at the agency’s goals to promote economic vitality, improve safety, support multimodal transportation systems, and create healthier communities
Senate Transportation Infrastructure Act makes welcome additions but fails to change the status quo
Today the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works approved America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act, a bill that will reauthorize the FAST Act once it expires in September 2020. T4America director Beth Osborne offered this statement: “This first attempt at reauthorization from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has some notable new additions worth praising, […]
The Generating Resilient, Environmentally Exceptional National (GREEN) Streets Act introduced in the Senate today
Today Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Tom Carper (D-DE) introduced a bill that would measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled. This would be transformative. Transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gases (GHG), contributing 28 percent of the United States’ total GHG emissions. While many other sectors have improved, transportation […]
Announcing our inaugural Arts, Culture and Transportation Fellows
Transportation for America announces its inaugural class of fellows for the new Arts, Culture and Transportation Fellowship to help 11 individuals in four cities take their work at the intersection of arts and transportation to the next level.
Letter urges lawmakers to fully fund transportation this year and rethink the federal transportation program
WASHINGTON, DC – With over 200 signatures from elected officials and organizations, Transportation for America today sent a letter to Congress calling for Members to use fiscal year 2020 appropriations and the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization as two opportunities to fundamentally change the federal transportation program. Transportation for America (T4America) urges Congress to fully fund […]
Gulf Coast passenger rail receives $33 million in federal funding
New Orleans to Mobile passenger service gets a boost BATON ROUGE, LA, June 7, 2019 — The Southern Rail Commission’s efforts to restore passenger rail service to the Gulf Coast received a significant shot in the arm Friday with the long-awaited announcement of a $33 million grant from the Federal Rail Administration (FRA). This federal […]
The inside scoop on Repair Priorities 2019
After the release of Repair Priorities 2019, we hosted a webinar in partnership with Taxpayers for Common Sense to talk about the findings and recommendations of our new report.
In the Washington Post: Let’s skip the infrastructure spending spree
A new opinion piece in the Washington Post takes a contrarian view of all the talk about money during Infrastructure Week. Let’s skip the infrastructure plan and focus on policy, because without good policy more spending could actually do more harm than good.
Repair Priorities 2019 is here — and it shows that more money won’t fix our infrastructure problems
It’s infrastructure Week again and politicians are back at it, bemoaning our “crumbling roads and bridges” and insisting we must spend more to fix the problem. But we’ve got some cold water to throw on this pity party: Despite more transportation spending over the last decade, the percentage of the roads nationwide in “poor condition” increased from 14 to 20 percent.
New report chronicles how the nation’s road conditions have worsened as many states prioritize expansion instead of repair
WASHINGTON, DC — Repair Priorities 2019, a new report released today by Transportation for America and Taxpayers for Common Sense, shows that, despite more spending, the percentage of the roads nationwide in “poor condition” increased from 14 percent to 20 percent and 37 states saw the percentage of their roads in poor condition increase from 2009-2017.
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